There's a part of me that hoped it wouldn't have had to come to this. That the live action may not be as bad as people were saying it would be. I was about two minutes into the first episode when it set in that once again, being optimistic can only ever end horribly.
Even the anime saw it coming!
From what I've seen, a lot of people who gave the show a chance gave up after the first couple of episodes. Not that I blame them; the first impression it leaves is rough and barely like the anime it draws from. I will say things start to get better later on and there are some brief flashes of greatness, although it still never manages to get anywhere near what made the original so special. That said, I haven't seen the last two episodes yet, and from what I've heard of them already I'm not exactly looking forward to them. When I do I'll write up my thoughts about it in more detail, but it's not like I have to rush to finish it before the next season starts at this point.
I feel if it was called anything else it would've had a better reception. There was some real talent and effort put into this show by the visual designers, effects artists, musicians, choreographers and (some) actors. It's a shame they couldn't spare much for the writers' room, but there is a minority of people who actually enjoyed the show for what it was and would've liked to see more. At the end of the day it wasn't what most fans wanted, and Netflix simply chose to cut their losses instead of piss people off further. But being pissed off at a TV show isn't an excuse to be a dick. I thought Alex Hassel's portrayal of Vicious was one of the worst things about the whole series, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna send the guy death threats. Yet he had to disable comments on his Instagram because of all the hate he was getting. I can only imagine what Daniella Pineda (Faye), Mason Alexander-Park (Gren) or *spoiler* Eden Perkins (Ed) are going through after their particularly polarizing performances. Us weebs have a bad enough reputation as it is and shit like this helps nobody.
This may affect Netflix's future attempts at adapting anime. It might mean they'll finally start giving the fans what they want instead of pandering to the lowest common denominator, distilling complex and beloved characters into simple archetypes with dialogue feeling like it was written by an AI fed with Joss Whedon scripts. One Piece is their next high-profile adaptation of a manga/anime and it looks like Eiichiro Oda will have more creative control over the production of that than Shinichiro Watanabe had for this, hopefully meaning it'll feel more like the original series. Surely Netflix will finally learn from their mistakes by then? Right? Please?
Over to you, would you have liked a season 2 or do you think season 1 was already too much? Let us know below!
